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Everyone's Hero

Everyone's Hero is just the same old over-produced CGI-animated sap they keep shoveling at the kids--except there"s a talking baseball and bat in this one. Fun!

Story

Baseball doesn"t hold quite the same magic as it once did. That"s why they had to set Everyone's Hero in the Depression-era, when the New York Yankees ruled the game and their star player Babe Ruth sat on the throne. As the story goes, a young boy named Yankee Irving (Jake T. Austin) has to save his dad"s job as a janitor at Yankee Stadium after Ruth"s beloved bat is stolen by the big, bad Chicago Cubs owner (Robin Williams) and his lackey (William H. Macy) right before the World Series. Yankee"s dad is blamed for the theft, so the kid, obsessed with the Babe and doesn"t want his family living in the streets, sets out on an adventure to get the bat back. He has some help, chiefly from an old forgotten baseball (Rob Reiner) who was once in the Show but got hit out of the park as a lousy foul balland the bat itself, nicknamed Darlin" (Whoopi Goldberg), who sasses her way through the shenanigans. Warms your heart already, doesn"t it?

Acting

It seems everyone"s having a good time. Reiner is particularly cantankerous as Screwie, voicing the baseball as if he was an old Jewish man yelling at the kids on the street for making too much noise. Not a whole lot to like about the character, but he provides comic foil, especially with Goldberg as the pampered bat, who knows how kind the real Babe is. For some odd reason, Williams is un-credited as the blowhard Cubs owner Napoleon Cross, but it"s not too hard to pick out his distinctive voice. Maybe the actor didn"t want to be labeled a bad guy. But Macy is sufficiently wacky as Cross" henchman and Cubs pitcher Lefty McGinnis, who has all manner of bad things happen to him--electrocuted, hit by a train, you get the pictureas he chases after the kid and the bat.

Direction

In retrospect, slamming a movie co-directed by the late Christopher Reeve as a pet project for his young son (with wife Dana Reeve, who died of lung cancer earlier this year, providing the voice of Yankee"s mom) seems a tad coldhearted. But unfortunately, even with all the heart, soul--and apparently lots of time--poured into it, Everyone's Hero still comes off as bland and overdone. There"s the same hackneyed dialogue, filled with the same feel-good messages ("Have faith in yourself!" "Friends stick together!"), and the same insipid pop tunes peppered throughout. It may have been more interesting if the whole story were told from the baseball"s point of view. How about if ALL the equipment talked--the mitts, the bases, et. al.--and we saw the game through their eyes? Not bad, eh? If only this had been my brain child...